Standards and political connections: Evidence from Tunisia

Kruse, Hendrik W.; Martínez‐Zarzoso, Inmaculada; Baghdadi, Leila

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102731

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The Tunisian economy however suffered from serious structural problems, in particular insufficient job creation matching the skills of its university graduates, as well as entrenched regional inequality of opportunity. Regulatory policies that limited competition especially in sectors where firms politically connected to the Ben-Ali family were most active, corruption, bureaucracy and restrictive labor laws had all dampened economic performance and culminated in the Jasmine revolution in December 2010 to January 2011 (Rijkers et al, 2017;Kruse et al, 2021;World Bank, 2014). Our study captures the period immediately before the revolution (2008) at the time of the international financial crisis, and immediately after (2014), at a time when the political situation had stabilized to some extent, but youth unemployment was still exceptionally high, and economic growth had not yet recovered (Baah-Boateng, 2016;Assaad et al, 2017b;Stampini and Verdier-Chouchane, 2011).…”

Section: Country Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Literature and Country Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

AlAzzawi

Hlásny

2022

IJM

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and drivers of employment vulnerability among youth in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, and their propensity to transition to better jobs over time.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on longitudinal data from Labor Market Panel Surveys spanning 6–20 years. The authors use transition matrices to examine the prevalence of transitions between labor market statuses for the same individuals over time, distinguishing between youth and non-youth, and men and women, as well as multinomial logistic regressions that control for individual and family background, including previous labor market status, family wealth and parental education.FindingsThe paper finds that youth in all three countries were disadvantaged in terms of labor market outcomes with most young men in particular ending up in vulnerable jobs while women of all ages were most likely to exit the labor market all together, unless they had formal jobs. Moreover, youth who started out in the labor market in a vulnerable job were unlikely to move to a better-quality job over time. Family wealth, parental education and father's occupation were found to be important determinants of labor market outcomes and vulnerability, even after a long period of work experience.Social implicationsThe paper finds that wealth effects, parental education and occupation effects follow workers throughout their careers, implying low equality of opportunity and inter-generational and lifetime mobility.Originality/valueThe findings indicate worsening labor market outcomes over time, heavily influenced by family background. High levels of vulnerable employment persistence, regardless of skill and experience, reinforce the importance of initial labor market outcome on the quality of lifetime employment prospects.

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Section: Country Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Literature and Country Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

AlAzzawi

Hlásny

2022

IJM

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“…The dependent variable is the quality change between periods t and t ‐5, which is defined as

{Δquality}_{fkct} = {quality}_{fkct} - {quality}_{italicfkc, t - 5}

Referring to Curzi et al (2015) and Falkowski et al (2019), all explanatory variables are lagged by five years to reduce the potential for endogeneity concerns arising from reverse causality. Here, potential reverse causality describes the event where an association between standards and quality upgrading is not due to direct causality from standards to quality upgrading, but rather because the need for quality upgrading actually results in changes to standards (Kruse et al, 2021); that is, the government targets low‐quality products with more standards for upgrading, so that quality might inversely influence standard‐setting. Standard generation is a time‐consuming process, as it typically takes more than five years from the proposition of a new standard to its final implementation (Blind & Jungmittag, 2005).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As firm‐level data have become available in recent years, many studies have begun to examine the effect of agri‐food standards on trade at the firm‐level (e.g. Curzi et al, 2020; Kruse et al, 2021). It is found that compared with larger exporting firms, smaller firms are more affected by restrictive standards in their market entry and exit decisions and more prone to exit the market (Fernandes et al, 2019).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the internationalisation of China's agri‐food standards affect export quality upgrading?—Evidence from firm‐product‐level data

Wang

Zhou

2022

Aus J Agri & Res Econ

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China attaches importance to the development of standards in agri‐food sectors, especially the harmonisation of national standards with international standards. Our study matches agri‐food product standards and firm‐product customs data for the period from 2000 to 2015. We perform an empirical analysis using the ‘distance to the frontier’ model to identify the effects of the internationalisation of China's agri‐food product standards on the quality upgrading of firms' exported products. The results suggest that when Chinese standards are harmonised with international measures, there is a significant positive impact on quality upgrading. In addition, this international standards–quality relationship is nonmonotonic; that is, firm‐level products that are far from the quality frontier are more likely to upgrade quality in response to an increase in standards. Conversely, national standards have not demonstrated good trade performance and have no significant quality‐promoting effect on firms' export products. These results are robust to various checks. Moreover, the heterogeneous effects further suggest that the positive correlation between international standards and quality upgrading is even stronger for modified versions of international standards, in smaller‐sized firms and foreign‐invested firms. Finally, the quality upgrading effects of international standards induce an increase in both the extensive and the intensive margins of firms' exports.

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“…This paper relates to three strands of recent literature. The first is the literature on the economic effects of trade policy (Goldberg and Pavcnik, 2016;De Loecker et al, 2016;Amiti and Konings, 2007;Handley et al, 2020;Fan et al, 2015;Amiti et al, 2019;Handley et al, 2020b;Fajgelbaum et al, 2020) and non-tariff measures in particular (Ederington and Ruta, 2016;Fontagné et al, 2015;Grundke and Moser, 2019;Kruse et al, 2021). A key message from this literature is that, as NTMs have progressively replaced tariffs as a determinant of trade costs, an analysis focused on these measures is needed to precisely assess the impact of trade policy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade Policy and Exporters' Resilience: Evidence from Indonesia

Calì¹,

Ghose²,

Montfaucon³

et al. 2022

Policy Research Working Papers

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The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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Standards and political connections: Evidence from Tunisia

Cited by 6 publications

References 18 publications

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

Does the internationalisation of China's agri‐food standards affect export quality upgrading?—Evidence from firm‐product‐level data

Trade Policy and Exporters' Resilience: Evidence from Indonesia

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